The Bronx Zoo

My friend Shawn has a zoo membership that ends this month, so he decided to get one last use out of it, and I tagged along. He had free access to any of the four city zoos (and aquarium), but I wanted to see the Bronx Zoo. We went Saturday, which was kind of a crappy day — rainy, chilly and all-around gross — but as with a lot of things I've done here in the winter, we basically had the place to ourselves. The zoo is huge, and took us quite a while to walk through, even with some of the exhibits closed for the winter. I didn't mind missing out on a few animals, since I was getting in for free, but just know that if you go in the off season you won't be able to see everything.

There are still plenty of indoor exhibits (bonus: they're warm!) and of course the seals and polar bears don't mind being wet and chilly. It was nice to be able to walk around without tripping over a million screaming children, and the rain wasn't nearly as prohibitive as I feared it might be. We had umbrellas and boots, so we totally survived, even if some of my photos look a little "wet."

My favorite animals to see in zoos are the penguins, but their house was closed for renovations, so I think I liked the monkeys best — especially this little dude with his leaf, he cracked me up.

Or maybe the lemurs because they kind of reminded me of cats (especially considering the frequency with which we we "treated" to views of their buttholes) and were straight chillin' on this branch. I was also surprised when we first walked in to see peacocks roaming the grounds. There was a concentration of them when we first walked in, but then every so often we'd see another — blocking the door to the gift shop, blocking the door to the mouse house — apparently they like causing trouble.

It's hard to compare because of the weather and the closed exhibits, but I think the Bronx Zoo is one of the best, if not largest, zoos that I've ever been to. It was a little tricky to get to because of construction on the only two train lines that go there, but I'm really glad we went. It was also my first time in the Bronx, but I'll be back next week when my uncle and I go to the Orchid show at the Botanical Gardens. As much as I've loved New York in the winter, I'm very much looking forward to spring, although I'll be spending much of it back in Ohio. But let's not talk about that right now.